[ The High Price of Overly Prescriptive HR Policies ]

Recently, one of my colleagues left our firm to make significantly more money at another company. We wanted to keep her, but the commission-based salary offered by the other company was more than we could match. She hadn’t realized how long her new commute would be during rush hour, however, and after three days of long, round-trip commutes during rush-hour traffic, she asked to shift her schedule an hour earlier to spend less time in unproductive gridlock.

Her manager denied her request, saying, “If we did it for you, we’d have to do it for others.”

It was good news for us; she was back with our team the following Monday.

Too many companies’ HR policies are overly restrictive. Such policies are often convoluted and overly paternal, and attempt to control the behavior of regular people through rules designed to rein in the “bad apples.”